


Give Me a Hand

by TheDevil_MadeMeDoIt



Series: You Wanna Dance? [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (that isnt very important tho), Fluff, I promise, I swear, M/M, Pidge is a little shit, Probably not accurate, barely any angst, dancer pidge, ex airforce shiro, i tried to make it believeable, matt and shiros first meeting, prosthetics expert matt, shiro gets a new arm, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 14:50:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10856235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDevil_MadeMeDoIt/pseuds/TheDevil_MadeMeDoIt
Summary: Shiro loses his arm in a freak accident and has trouble adjusting to it. Enter Matt Holt, prosthesis genius, who, well, gives Shiro a hand.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First meeting fics give me life, tbh. There's not much romance or anything in this, its just how the two met and Shiro getting his new arm (hence the punny title, I'm not sorry. Blame 007, she thought of it and we both cracked up in the middle of class.)
> 
> Hope you enjoy this! I'm sorry it took almost a month to write (I say as I completely ignored it for three weeks in order to write wolfstar fics. i'm still not sorry.)
> 
> Find me on [My Tumblr](https://thedevilmademedo1t.tumblr.com/)
> 
> -Devil

Shiro had stopped eating three days ago. He had stopped sleeping two days ago. He laid in his cheap hospital bed staring at the bland white ceiling of the hospital he was in, all day every day. He feigned sleep when a nurse would come and check up on him. Though he didn't think he was a believable fake sleeper. His heart rate was far too high for that. He thought that maybe, just maybe, if he forced himself to pass out, he’d wake up again and everything would be okay. 

He passed out four times that week. Nothing changed. 

The doctors put him on sleeping pills, he couldn't fight them. He woke up screaming about a week after being put on them, shouting that his arm hurt. It really, really hurt. It hurt so much that a doctor and three nurses had to hold him down in order to knock him out again. 

When he woke up again, the pain was gone. And then it wasn't again. He managed to get a grip on himself this time, chanting that it isn't real. His arm was gone, this isn't real pain. It felt pretty real though.

His doctor called it phantom pain, something that many amputees experienced after losing a limb. 

“It's normal for you to feel the missing limb, like it's still there, Mr. Shirogane.” His doctor explained. “There are some cases wherein amputees can feel their phantom limb for years after losing it…” 

At that point Shiro threw his arm (the one that was still attached to him) over his eyes and tuned the doctor out. Years, she had said. Could he deal with this feeling for years? Hell, could he deal with it for a week? 

He was told that the hospital would provide a temporary prosthetic arm for him until he was able to meet with a specialist. He was told that it would arrive sometime in the next two weeks. 

When it arrived, Shiro was less than pleased. It was a grotesque thing, large and bulky, not so much resembling an arm as a bulldozer lift. It was attached by a series of straps that wound their way around his shoulders and chest. It was like wearing a straightjacket, essentially rendering any movement of his shoulders impossible.

He chose not to wear it most of the time. 

He had been in the hospital for nearly two months when he finally met his saviour. Not in the most conventional of ways, but still. 

His therapist, a nice man who tried to get Shiro to talk, and failed most of the time, had suggested that he call up an expert in prosthesis to speak with Shiro about his options as they stood now. 

Shiro agreed. Anything would be better than what he had now. 

And so, a week later, Shiro found himself sitting in his therapist's waiting room, again. And he seemed to be waiting for years. He had too much pent up energy to just sit. He ended up pacing the length of the room, happy that no one else was in the room with him as he paced like a caged animal. 

And then, a door to his right opened so suddenly that he stopped right in front of the door, where a figure was rushing out, resulting in a collision that snapped shiros jaw shut hard and sent his toppling to the floor, the person who had run into him following not long after. 

The person landed on his chest, forcing all of the air in his lungs to rush out all at once with a loud whooping sound.

“Oh shit. I’m sorry! You okay?” The person, who Shiro now identified as a male spoke rapidly as he tried to gain his bearings and pushed off of Shiros chest. 

Once free of the added weight, Shiro managed to roll onto his side in an attempt to get up again. This was so much easier when he had two arms. Oh well. 

“Yeah. I'm okay. Sorry about that.” He said, dusting off his jeans. “I usually don't make it a habit to stop in front of open doors. My bad.” He grinned slightly, noticing that the guy had large glasses which were off kilter on his nose, with one of the lenses on his cheek rather than in front of his eye. 

The guy grinned and adjusted his glasses (which Shiro was mildly disappointed about because it was a cute look on him).

“Yeah. I usually don't run around without watching where I'm going, so let's call it even.” He held out his hand to shake Shiros, apparently just now noticing his lack of right arm. The man promptly changed hands to shake Shiros left hand instead. 

“Im Matt. The uh… the prosthetics guy. You must be Mr. Shirogane.” he- Matt- smiled as they shook hands. 

Shiro had to physically stop his jaw from dropping. This guy had to be younger than he was. Nineteen, maybe. There was no way that this kid could possibly be the expert that Shiros therapist kep going on and on about. 

“Uh… yeah. Yeah. Thats me. Just call me Shiro, though. Shirogane is just sort of a mouthful for most people.” Matt nodded, taking in the information and shifted his weight slightly, leaving the door behind him open. 

“Anyway. Sorry to keep you waiting. You’re welcome to come in and we an talk about what you're looking for with your prosthetic.” The two boys made their way into an office, obviously not one that Matt frequented, seeing as there were no personal effects anywhere to be seen. 

They sat down and had to discuss pretty much everything Shiro could think of about his new prosthetic and then some. 

“I need to measure your arm…”  
“You're left arm, Shiro. You know, the one that attached to you? Yeah” (Matts grin was cute, Shiro noticed.)  
“Okay, just… bend your elbow a bit more...yeah. Like that. Thats perfect.”  
“Okay. Put it straight out on front of you and… yep. That's good.”  
“And now we can discuss the color scheme…”  
“Well, it doesn't have to be colored if you don't want it to be…”  
“Yeah. it’ll take about two months to fabricate..”  
“Fully functional…”  
“...nervous system and synapses….”

At the end of their meeting, three cups of coffee had been drunk by both boys, three hours had passed, and Shiros brain felt numb with all of the information that he had just absorbed.  
All of his questions about Matt's capabilities had been dropped long ago, and it was obvious that the redhead knew exactly what he was talking about when they were discussing shiros prosthetic. 

And shiro thought he was cute. So that was fun.


	2. Chapter 2

Three months later saw Shiro sat in the same waiting room as he had when he’d met Matt on the first day. He was far less anxious about this meeting, but he was still pretty nervous about it. His arm was supposedly ready for him to try out. 

Well, it was supposed to be ready last week, but Matt's flight had been canceled and they had to reschedule their meeting. This, unfortunately, had happened very often in the past few months. As it turned out, Matt lived across the country in a town called Altea. It was a little college town in New Mexico, Matt told him. Not many people knew about it, but those who did always loved it.  
Shiro learned that Matt had a sibling named Pidge, who was evidently a walking, talking meme. Shiro learned this when matt was on the phone with them during one of their meetings and Shiro made the mistake of starting the “what gender are you” discussion. Which went as follows:  
“Are you a Ms. or a Mr.?”  
“Dr.”  
“Okay. But what gender are you?”  
“I'm a scientist”  
“But what's in your pants?”  
“Physics.” 

Shiro looked helplessly at matt, who was trying so hard to retain his laughter and mostly failing. Pidge was sniggering over the phone at him as well. Shiro just sighed and shrunk down in his chair.  
“I use they/ them pronouns. I'm not a boy or a girl, really. I do like science though. You can call me Dr. if you want!” Pidge told him. 

“You're not a doctor Pidge. You're a college freshman. Stop.” Matt told them, and promptly ended the call, but not before Pidge called out a “Love you, jackass!’ and laughed maniacally. 

Matt was laughing for a good ten minutes after that and apologizing for his sibling to Shiro, who was also laughing and telling Matt that it was okay. He liked Pidge. They were… interesting.

But now he was sitting, waiting for Matt to come and grab him so that they could begin their meeting. It felt like forever and a half before Matt came out of the office he used when he was here and ushered Shiro in with a wave of his hand. 

Once Shiro had taken his usual seat across the table/ desk thing that Matt used, Matt showed him the final design of his arm. It was simple really, just plain metal and plastic. It didn't look really fancy or anything. It was almost a perfect replica of his left arm, and he wasn't really all that surprised by that, seeing as that's what Matt modeled this one after. 

Matt helped shiro fit the new arm over the stump where his right arm used to be. It took a while, because matt had to place down a bit of padding on the arm before the prosthetic could go on.

“After so long with nothing there, your nerve endings are going to be extremely sensitive. If we just flat out put your arm on, it would hurt really badly, so I just wanna take some precautions, okay?’ Matt told him as he placed the cotton bandages over the area that the prosthetic would be covering. 

“It's gonna take a bit of getting used to. And it might feel like lead for a while, like it's really heavy. You're not going to get used to moving it around for a bit, but I’ll be here more frequently to help you out with that. Think of it as a sort of weird ass physical therapy, if you want.” Matt laughed as he took his hands off of the prosthetic now attached to Shiro. It immediately fell with a slight thump onto his lap and he looked at Matt with puppy dog eyes. That look on shiros face shouldn't have been allowed, in Matt's opinion. 

“Is that how you got through tough situations in the air force? Just use the puppy eyes of doom?” Matt laughed.

Shiro grinned and shrugged, very aware of the weight of his new right arm weighing the motion down. It felt good, if he was being honest with himself. The arm wasn't crazy heavy like the prosthetic that the hospital had provided him with was. He was willing to bet that if he weighed both of his arms, they wouldn't be far off from each other. 

He had to shake his head to clear those thoughts away when Matt started talking again. 

“...I told you the first time we met, the arm is fully functional. Well, it will be once you get used to it being there. There are sensors on the end that connects with your shoulder that read your nerves as they fire. All you have to do is pretend that your real arm is still there. So, if you wanna grab something, you just have to imagine that your flesh and bone arm is the thing that's doing the holding. It's kind of like muscle memory, in a way. It’ll be hard at first, and I don't recommend practicing on anything potentially dangerous, like a glass or a fork or knife. Try stress balls and pillows and things like that first, okay?”

Shiro nodded and looked down at the metal that made up his new arm. It didn't look like it was functional, all limp and boneless on his lap. Matt smiled sadly at him. 

“Shiro. I promise that this will work. Look,” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and unlocked it, pulling up a video to show Shiro. “I found this cat a while ago. He was in super bad shape. He actually lost one of his front legs, all the way up to his little cat shoulder, just like you. Pidge adopted him pretty quickly. His name is Rover and is Pidges only true love. Anyway. Hes what got me into this whole prosthesis thing.” 

On the small screen of his phone was a ragged looking ginger cat who did, in fact, have a metallic front leg. He was walking around in a cafe somewhere with no issues whatsoever. He didn't even seem to notice that one of his legs was fake. He stopped in front of the person holding the camera- which Shiro could only assume was Matt- and sat down. He started bathing his face, using the metallic arm, which bent just like a regular cats leg would. The cat rubbed his face with his paw several times before switching to use his other paw, presumably to clean the other side of his face.

Shiro was struck still. The cat didn't even notice it. What the hell.

Matt saw Shiros look and grinned. 

“I told you. You won't notice it after a while. You can totally sleep in it if you want. You don't have to, but the metal shouldn’t be very cold to the touch once you've worn it for a while.” Matt kept explaining the logistics of the arm to Shiro, who had mostly tuned him out at this point. 

The arm wasn't bothering him anymore. He could barely feel it, if he was being honest. This was so completely different from the fake arm that the hospital had provided him with oh so many months ago. 

Matts small smile still graced his face as he watched Shiro adjust to his new arm. 

In another three months, Shiro had managed to uproot himself and his little brother, Keith, and moved closer to Matt's hometown so that they would be closer together if ever there was a malfunction with his arm. At least, that's what Shiro told himself. 

He started spending a lot of time with Matt. He met Pidge in person (they were short and skinny, and could take him down in about four seconds flat, damn those dancers legs of theirs.). Keith began to incessantly heckle Shiro about how much time he was spending around Matt. (you're in loooove~) (shut up Keith. No i'm not.) 

Shiro got a job working for Matt's father, who owned a dojo in town. Not too soon after, Keith started working with him and became infatuated with one of the dancers from the studio next door. 

About two months later, Shiro asked Matt out. 

Three months after that, Matt got a workshop right next to the dojo and spent most of his free time with his boyfriend.

Keith and pidge both agreed that their brothers were hopeless and were disgusted by the amount of PDA between the two. 

Everything was perfect, all because the cute redhead currently asleep in Shiros lap on his couch had given him a hand. (Literally.)


End file.
